So we find that the first church-towers that arose in such
Rhenish places as Oberwesel, Gelnhausen, Bacharach, Coblentz, Cologne,
Bingen, "sweet Bingen on the Rhine," no longer ended in these horizontal
lines, but arose in pointed shapes. Indeed, the Germans, who were great
rivals of the Italians in those days, not only in matters pertaining to
architecture, but to literature also, in the same independent spirit
which induced them alone, of all civilized peoples, to retain through
all time the cramped, angular letters of monkish transcribers, in
preference to the fair and square Roman forms, took particular pride in
avoiding horizontal lines entirely at the tops of their towers, as they
did at the tops of their letters. Wherever they so occur, they are
insignificant,--rather ornamental than constructive. Not so with the
English; they kept the square tops to their towers, and contented
themselves with the pointed superstructure. Let us see how Teutonic
stubbornness arranged the matter. Each separate face of their towers,
whether these towers were square or octangular, ended above in a gable;
and from these gables, in various ways, arose the octangular pointed
roof or spire.
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